2. Things which are not in commerce, as public roads, are in
their nature unalienable. Some things are unalienable, in
consequence of particular provisions in the law forbidding their
sale or transfer, as pensions granted by the government. The natural rights of life and liberty areUNALIENABLE.Bouviers
Law Dictionary 1856 Edition

"Unalienable:
incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and
transferred." Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page
1523:

You can not surrender, sell or transfer unalienable rights,
they are a gift from the creator to the individual and can not
under any circumstances be surrendered or taken. All individual's
have unalienable rights.

Inalienable rights:
Rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred
without the consent of the one possessing such rights.
Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101.

You can surrender, sell or transfer inalienable rights if you
consent either actually or constructively. Inalienable rights are
not inherent in man and can be alienated by government. Persons
have inalienable rights. Most state constitutions recognize only
inalienable rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,-'life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;' and
to 'secure,' not grant or
create, these rights, governments are instituted. That
property which a man has honestly acquired he retains full
control of, subject to these limitations: First, that he shall
not use it to his neighbor's injury, and that does not mean that
he must use it for his neighbor's benefit; second, that if the
devotes it to a public use, he gives to the public a right to
control that use; and third, that whenever the public needs
require, the public may take it upon payment of due compensation.
BUDD v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF NEW YORK, 143 U.S. 517 (1892)

Among these unalienable rights,
as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to
pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any
lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with
the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity
or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest
enjoyment. The common business and callings of life, the ordinary
trades and pursuits, which are innocuous in themselves, and have
been followed in all communities from time immemorial, must
therefore be free in this country to all alike upon the same
conditions. The right to pursue them, without let or hinderance,
except that which is applied to all persons of the same age, sex,
and condition, is a distinguishing privilege of citizens of the
United States, and an essential element of that freedom which
they claim as their birthright. It has been well said that 'THE
PROPERTY WHICH EVERY MAN HAS IN HIS OWN
LABOR, AS IT IS THE ORIGINAL FOUNDATION OF ALL OTHER
PROPERTY, SO IT IS THE MOST SACRED AND INVIOLABLE. The patrimony
of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own
hands, and to hinder his employing this strength and dexterity in
what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is
a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest
encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of
those who might be disposed to employ him. . . The right to
follow any of the common occupations of life is an inalienable
right, it was formulated as such under the phrase 'pursuit of
happiness' in the declaration of independence, which commenced
with the fundamental proposition that 'all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.' This right is a large ingredient in the civil liberty
of the citizen. To deny it to all but a few favored individuals,
by investing the latter with a monopoly, is to invade one of the
fundamental privileges of the citizen, contrary not only to
common right, but, as I think, to the express words of the
constitution. It is what no legislature has a right to do; and no
contract to that end can be binding on subsequent legislatures. .
. BUTCHERS' UNION CO. v. CRESCENT CITY CO., 111 U.S. 746
(1884)

"Burlamaqui (Politic c. #, . 15) defines natural
liberty as "the right which nature gives to all mankind
of disposing of their persons and property after the manner they
may judge most consonant to their happiness, on condition of
their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and so as
not to interfere with an equal exercise of the same rights by
other men;" and therefore it has been justly said, that
"absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the
right of personal security--the right of personal liberty--and
the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights have been
justly considered and frequently declared by the people of
this country to be natural, inherent, and unalienable."
Potter's Dwarris, ch. 13, p. 429.

From these passages it is evident; that the right of acquiring
and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the
natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man. Men have a
sense of property: Property is necessary to their subsistence,
and correspondent to their natural wants and desires; its
security was one of the objects, that induced them to unite in
society. No man would become a member of a community, in which he
could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labour and industry. . .
The constitution expressly declares, that the right of acquiring,
possessing, and protecting property is natural, inherent, and unalienable. It is a right
not ex gratia from the legislature, but ex debito from the
constitution. . . Where is the security, where the inviolability
of property, if the legislature, by a private act, affecting
particular persons ONLY, can take land from one citizen, who
acquired it legally, and vest it in another? VANHORNE'S LESSEE
v. DORRANCE, 2 U.S. 304 (1795)

("[T]he Due Process Clause protects [the unalienable liberty
recognized in the Declaration of Independence] rather than the
particular rights or privileges conferred by specific laws or
regulations." SANDIN v. CONNER, ___ U.S. ___ (1995)

In the second article of the Declaration of Rights, which was
made part of the late Constitution of Pennsylvania, it is
declared: 'That all men have a natural and unalienable
right to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of their
own consciences and understanding; and that no man ought or of
right can be compelled, to attend any religious worship, or erect
or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry,
contrary to, or against, his own free will and consent; nor can
any man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived
or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his
religious sentiments, or peculiar mode of religious worship; and
that no authority can, or ought to be, vested in, or assumed, by
any power whatever, that shall, in any case, interfere with, or
in any manner controul, the right of conscience in the free
exercise of religious worship.' (Dec. of Rights, Art. 2.). . .
(The Judge then read the 1st. 8th. and 11th articles of the
Declaration of Rights; and the 9th. and 46th sections
of the Constitution of Pennsylvania. See 1 Vol. Dall. Edit. Penn.
Laws p. 55. 6. 60. in the Appendix.) From these passages it is
evident; that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and
having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man.
Men have a sense of property: Property is necessary to their
subsistence, and correspondent to their natural wants and
desires; its security was one of the objects, that induced them
to unite in society. No man would become a member of a community,
in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labour and
industry. The preservation of property then is a primary object
of the social compact, and, by the late Constitution of
Pennsylvania, was made a fundamental law.
. . The constitution expressly declares, that the right of
acquiring, possessing, and protecting property is natural,
inherent, and unalienable.
It is a right not ex gratia from the legislature, but ex debito
from the constitution. VANHORNE'S LESSEE v. DORRANCE, 2 U.S.
304 (1795)

I had thought it self-evident that all men were endowed by
their Creator with liberty as one of the cardinal unalienable rights. It is
that basic freedom which the Due Process Clause protects, rather
than the particular rights or privileges conferred by specific
laws or regulations. . . It demeans the holding in Morrissey -
more importantly it demeans the concept of liberty itself - to
ascribe to that holding nothing more than a protection of an
interest that the State has created through its own prison
regulations. For if the inmate's protected liberty interests are
no greater than the State chooses to allow, he is really little
more than the slave described in the 19th century cases. I think
it clear that even the inmate retains an unalienable
interest in liberty - at the very minimum the right to be treated
with dignity - which the Constitution may never ignore. MEACHUM
v. FANO, 427 U.S. 215 (1976)

All commissions (regardless of their form, or by whom issued)
contain, impliedly, the constitutional reservation, that the
people at any time have the right, through their representatives,
to alter, reform, or abolish the office, as they may alter, if
they choose, the whole form of government. In our magna charta it
is proclaimed (2d section of the Bill of Rights, under the 9th
Article of the Constitution of Pennsylvania), that 'all power is
inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on
their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and
happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all
times an unalienable
and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish their
government, in such manner as they may think proper.' It has been
well said, by one of the ablest judges of the age, that 'a
constitution is not to receive a technical construction, like a
common law instrument or a statute. It is to be interpreted so as
to carry out the great principles of the government, not to
defeat them.' Per Gibson, C. J., in Commonwealth v. Clark, 7
Watts & S. (Pa.), 133. BUTLER v. COM. OF PENNSYLVANIA, 51
U.S. 402 (1850)

The rights of life and personal liberty are natural rights of
man. 'To secure these rights,' says the Declaration of
Independence, 'governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed.' The very
highest duty of the States, when they entered into the Union
under the Constitution, was to protect all persons within their
boundaries in the enjoyment of these 'unalienable
rights with which they were endowed by their
Creator.' Sovereignty, for this purpose, rests alone with the
States. It is no more the duty or within the power of the United
States to punish for a conspiracy to falsely imprison or murder
within a State, than it would be to punish for false imprisonment
or murder itself. U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)

". . . The question presented is not whether the United
States has the power to condemn and appropriate this property of
the Monongahela Company, for that is conceded, but how much it
must pay as compensation therefor. Obviously, this question, as
all others which run along the line of the extent of the
protection the individual has under the Constitution against the
demands of the government, is of importance; for in any society
the fulness and sufficiency of the securities which surround the
individual in the use and enjoyment of his property constitute
one of the most certain tests of the character and value of the
government. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, adopted
as they were soon after the adoption of the Constitution, are in
the nature of a bill of rights, and were adopted in order to
quiet the apprehension of many, that without some such
declaration of rights the government would assume, and might be
held to possess, the power to trespass upon those rights of
persons and property which by the Declaration of Independence
were affirmed to be unalienable
rights. UNITED STATES v. TWIN CITY POWER CO.,
350 U.S. 222 (1956)

'By the common law, the king as parens patriae owned the soil
under all the waters of all navigable rivers or arms of the sea
where the tide regularly ebbs and flows, including the shore or
bank to high- water mark. ... He held these rights, not for his
own benefit, but for the benefit of his subjects at large, who
were entitled to the free use of the sea, and all tide waters,
for the purposes of navigation, fishing, etc., subject to such
regulations and restrictions as the crown or the Parliament might
prescribe. By Magna Charta, and many subsequent statutes, the
powers of the king are limited, and he cannot now deprive his
subjects of these rights by granting the public navigable waters
to individuals. But there can be no doubt of the right of
Parliament in England, or the Legislature of this state, to make
such grants, when they do not interfere with the vested rights of
particular individuals. The right to navigate the public waters
of the state and to fish therein, and the right to use the public
highways, are all public rights belonging to the people at large.
They are not the private unalienable
rights of each individual. Hence the Legislature
as the representatives of the public may restrict and regulate
the exercise of those rights in such manner as may be deemed most
beneficial to the public at large: Provided they do not interfere
with vested rights which have been granted to individuals.'
APPLEBY v. CITY OF NEW YORK, 271 U.S. 364 (1926)

I Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution (1876) 319 et
seq. In ratifying the Constitution the following

declarations were made: New Hampshire, p. 326, 'XI. Congress
shall make no laws touching religion, or to infringe the rights
of conscience.' Virginia, p. 327, '... no right, of any
denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or
modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of
Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President, or any
department or officer of the United States, except in those
instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those
purposes; and that among other essential rights, the liberty of
conscience, and of the press, cannot be cancelled, abridged,
restrained, or modified, by any authority of the United States.'
New York, p. 328, 'That the freedom of the press ought not to be
violated or restrained.' After the submission of the amendments,
Rhode Island ratified and declared, pp. 334, 335, 'IV. That
religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner
of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction,
and not by force and violence; and therefore all men have a
natural, equal, and unalienable right
to the exercise of religion according to the dictates of
conscience; and that no particular religious sect or society
ought to be favored or established, by law, in preference to
others. ... XVI. That the people have a right to freedom of
speech, and of writing and publishing their sentiments. That
freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty,
and ought not to be violated.' JONES v. CITY OF OPELIKA, 319
U.S. 105 (1943)

As to the objections made on the other side to our
interpretation of the compact, that it impugns the right to the
pursuit of happiness, which is inherent in every society of men,
and is incompatible with these unalienable
rights of sovereignty and of self-government,
which every independent State must possess, the answer is
obvious: that no people has a right to pursue its own happiness
to the injury of others, for whose protection solemn compacts,
like the present, have been made. It is a trite maxim, that man
gives up a part of his natural liberty when he enters into civil
society, as the price of the blessings of that state: and it may
be said, with truth, this liberty is well exchanged for the
advantages which flow from law and justice. GREEN v. BIDDLE,
21 U.S. 1 (1821)

This court said, in the case of The Bank of Columbia v. Okely
(4 Wheat. 235), in speaking of a summary proceeding given by the
charter of that bank for the collection of its debts: 'It is the
remedy, and not the right, and as such we have no doubt of its
being subject to the will of Congress. The forms of administering
justice, and the duties and powers of courts as incident to the
exercise of a branch of sovereign power, must ever be subject to
legislative will, and the power over them is unalienable, so as to bind
subsequent legislatures.' And in Young v. The Bank of Alexandria
(4 Cranch, 397), Mr. Chief Justice Marshall says: 'There is a
difference between those rights on which the validity of the
transactions of the corporation depends, which must adhere to
those transactions everywhere, and those peculiar remedies which
may be bestowed on it. The first are of general obligation; the
last, from their nature, can only be exercised in those courts
which the power making the grant can regulate.' See also The
Commonwealth v. The Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. et al., 43
Pa. St. 227; State of Maryland v. Northern Central Railroad Co.,
18 Md. 193; Colby v. Dennis, 36 Me. 1; Gowan v. Penobscot
Railroad Co., 44 id. 140. U.S. v. UNION PAC. R. CO., 98 U.S.
569 (1878)

It is significant that the guarantee of freedom of speech and
press falls between the religious guarantees and the guarantee of
the right to petition for redress of grievances in the text of
the First Amendment, the principles of which are carried to the
States by the Fourteenth Amendment. It partakes of the nature of
both, for it is as much a guarantee to individuals of their
personal right to make their thoughts public and put them before
the community, see Holt, Of the Liberty of the Press, in Nelson,
Freedom of the Press from Hamilton to the Warren Court 18-19, as
it is a social necessity required for the "maintenance of
our political system and an open society." Time, Inc. v.
Hill, supra, at 389. It is because of the personal nature

of this right that we have rejected all manner of prior
restraint on publication, Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697,
despite strong arguments that if the material was unprotected the
time of suppression was immaterial. Pound, Equitable Relief
Against Defamation and Injuries to Personality, 29 Harv. L. Rev.
640. The dissemination of the individual's opinions on matters of
public interest is for us, in the historic words of the
Declaration of Independence, an "unalienable
right" that "governments are
instituted among men to secure." History shows us that the
Founders were not always convinced that unlimited discussion of
public issues would be "for the benefit of all of us"13
but that they firmly adhered to the proposition that the
"true liberty of the press" permitted "every man
to publish his opinion." Respublica v. Oswald, 1 Dall. 319,
325 (Pa.). CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. v. BUTTS, 388 U.S. 130 (1967)

While the "meaning and scope of the First Amendment"
must be read "in light of its history and the evils it was
designed forever to suppress," Everson v. Board of
Education, supra, at 14-15, this Court has also recognized that
"this Nation's history has not been one of entirely
sanitized separation between Church and State." Committee
for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, supra,
at 760. "The fact that the Founding Fathers believed
devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of
man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings,
from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself."
Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 213 (1963).5
The Court properly has noted "an unbroken history of
official acknowledgment . . . of the role of religion in American
life." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S., at 674, and has
recognized that these references to "our religious
heritage" are constitutionally acceptable. Id., at 677. EDWARDS
v. AGUILLARD, 482 U.S. 578 (1987)

When the First Congress was debating the Bill of Rights, it
was contended that there was no need separately to assert the
right of assembly because it was subsumed in freedom of speech.
Mr. Sedgwick of Massachusetts argued that inclusion of
"assembly" among the enumerated rights would tend to
make the Congress "appear trifling in the eyes of their
constituents. . . ." If people freely converse together,
they must assemble for that purpose; it is a self-evident, unalienable right which the
people possess; it is certainly a thing that never would be
called in question . . . ." 1 Annals of Cong. 731 (1789).
Since the right existed independent of any written guarantee,
Sedgwick went on to argue that if it were the drafting
committee's purpose to protect all inherent rights of the people
by listing them, "they might have gone into a very lengthy
enumeration of rights," but this was unnecessary, he said,
"in a Government where none of them were intended to be
infringed." Id., at 732. Mr. Page of Virginia responded,
however, that at times "such rights have been opposed,"
and that "people have . . . been prevented from assembling
together on their lawful occasions": "[T]herefore it is
well to guard against such stretches of authority, by inserting
the privilege in the declaration of rights. If the people could
be deprived of the power of assembling under any pretext
whatsoever, they might be deprived of every other privilege
contained in the clause." Ibid. The motion to strike
"assembly" was defeated. Id., at 733. RICHMOND
NEWSPAPERS, INC. v. VIRGINIA, 448 U.S. 555 (1980)

"Gentlemen, I have insisted, at great length, upon the
origin of governments, and detailed the authorities which you
have heard upon the subject, because I consider it to be not only
an essential support, but the very foundation of the liberty of
the press. If Mr. Burke be right in his principles of government,
I admit that the press, in my sense of its freedom, ought not to
be free, nor free in any sense at all; and that all addresses to
the people upon the subjects of government, and all speculations
of amendment, of what kind or nature soever, are illegal and
criminal; since if the people have, with out possible re-call,
delegated all their authorities, they have no jurisdiction to
act, and therefore none to think or write upon such subjects; and
it would be a libel to arraign government or any of its acts,
before those who have no jurisdiction to correct them. But on the
other hand . . . no legal argument can shake the freedom of the
press in my sense of it, if I am supported in my doctrines
concerning the great unalienable right
of the people, to reform or to change their
governments. It is because the liberty of the press resolves
itself into this great issue, that it has been in every country
the last liberty which subjects have been able to wrest from
power. Other liberties are held under governments, but the
liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in due subjection
to their duties." 1 Speeches of Lord Erskine 524-525 (J.
High ed. 1876). HERBERT v. LANDO, 441 U.S. 153 (1979)

The denial of human rights was etched into the American
Colonies' first attempts at establishing self-government. When
the colonists determined to seek their independence from England,
they drafted a unique document cataloguing their grievances
against the King and proclaiming as "self-evident" that
"all men are created equal" and are endowed "with
certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The self-evident
truths and the unalienable rights were intended, however, to
apply only to white men. An earlier draft of the Declaration of
Independence, submitted by Thomas Jefferson to the Continental
Congress, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA REGENTS v. BAKKE, 438 U.S.
265 (1978)

The Declaration of Independence states the American creed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." This ideal was not fully achieved with the
adoption of our Constitution because of the hard and tragic
reality of Negro slavery. The Constitution of the new Nation,
while heralding liberty, in effect declared all men to be free
and equal - except black men who were to be neither free nor
equal. This inconsistency reflected a fundamental departure from
the American creed, a departure which it took a tragic civil war
to set right. With the adoption, however, of the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, freedom
and equality were guaranteed expressly to all regardless "of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude."1 United
States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 218. BELL v. MARYLAND, 378 U.S.
226 (1964)